Hello and welcome to the Lost Medals Australia blog. My name is Glyn Llanwarne and I am the founder of Lost Medals Australia. This blog complements my main website www.lostmedalsaustralia.com.
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18 March 2017

Bob Schafer

This is another example where the circumstances don't let us tell the full story. However, I think that the fact that Bill walked the streets of a suburb looking for people who knew a veteran who died in 1985 speaks volumes about the effort that goes in to some returns.

Miniature
medals, not being inscribed, are almost impossible to return. Glyn and I have
always relied on some documentation associated with the find to help guide our
way. However, it was a 1919 penny that had been ground down, silver plated and inscribed
‘R P SCHAFER V33055’, that led me to the Australian War Memorial and its WW2
Nominal Roll.

While War
Graves could give me Robert’s date of death, 1 October 1985, the leads dried
up. Next came a search (by hand) through a RSL Club’s set of old personnel
cards, that been carefully filed away. This gave me an address.

So I went
walking and while I was able to locate Robert’s last abode before his death, talking
to neighbours only produced a mountain of conflicting information, which
finally distilled down to:

“After
Bob died, Sally went to Queensland”

“They had
a son and a daughter, but the son died just after Bob”.
And the proverbial ‘that was before we came to live here”.

Finally
through a long ‘round robin’ of dates, and possible addresses, I was able
to locate Carol the daughter of Robert and Thelma Schafer. But who was Sally?
She was Robert’s mother and his NOK on his enlistment papers.

Now
having located who Sally was, it was easy to look back and find her death and
cremation at Fawkner. Even then there was no actual link between her's and
Robert’s cremation.

The final
chapter took place when I contacted Luke, who found the medals, and informed
him that he could expect a phone call from Carol to claim the medals.

And the
son? He didn’t die, he is still quietly living in Melbourne.

It does leave Carol with one unknown, where were
her father’s original medals?The returned medal tally is now 2045.